Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Crusaders' conclave in Baltimore

IT'S a few years now since some friends and I watched members of the British National Party (BNP) assembling outside an Essex tube station before they were ferried in cars to their secret conference venue. As the first car swung past us, carrying a middle-aged woman in its front passenger seat who smiled vacantly, and seemed a little out of place among so many hard-faced uglies and occasional peroxide blondes, my mate said "That's Pat Richardson".

Patricia Richardson is rather special to the BNP. Friends who've met her as a school governor tell me teachers and parents regard her as not all that bright, or all there, and wish she would find some other way to occupy her time. But as Councillor Richardson, she is prized by the BNP not just for her valiant efforts on Epping Forest District Council, warning of race war if more young blacks and Asians attend the local college; but because she belongs to a rare breed. She is a Jew in the BNP.

The BNP's Nick Griffin has boasted of being a Holocaust doubter as well as a racist, and he is far from the only one. His late predecessor John Tyndall had once called himself a National Socialist, and dressed up in appropriate uniform, and he denounced democracy as a "Jewish tool for world domination", before he helped found the BNP. But in recent years Griffin has told the faithful to put their antisemitism away, lest it impedes his pursuit of electoral respectability, and detracts from the more acceptable Islamophobia.

Israel's wars and massacres in Lebanon and Gaza are welcomed by fascists and racists, even if they vary their tune. Masquerading as "anti-Zionist" they will exploit confusion, saying "look, the Jews are as bad as Nazis" (which in their thinking means the Nazis were not all that bad), while at the same time rejoicing that "Israel shows how to deal with Muslims/Arabs, we ought to do the same!" But to show they are not antisemitic, and win acceptance in Essex suburbs, they can wheel out Pat Richardson, their pet Jew.

So much do they value the Loughton Broadway councillor's service, that this weekend they are sending her across the pond, to the American city of Baltimore, to mingle among assembled intellects at a conference on "Preserving Western Civilisation". Staged by an outfit called American Renaissance, this promises to be a very "civilised" event. No KKK hoods will be worn, and not a pair of jackboots in sight. The dress code specifies "jackets and ties for men; business attire for women'. Attendance costs $130 per head.

Among Pat Richardson's fellow speakers will be John Philippe Rushton, a professor from Western Ontario who has dug up the old chestnut about black people being less intelligent than whites, and received over $1 million from the Pioneer Fund, founded in 1937 for "race betterment".

"Racial difference in intelligence" will be a major theme in the conference. The chair is to be Dr.Michael H.Hart, an astro-physicist who has written a book called Understanding Human History. He too is Jewish, apparently. But then as with some neo-con newspaper columnists both sides of the Atlantic, people are being co-opted to the white christian supremacy idea by talking about the "Judeo-Christian heritage". (Nick Griffin says his favourite columnist is Melanie Philips. I'm not sure if he refers to her column in the Daily Mail, the Spectator or the Jewish Chronicle. It's probably all good stuff, I expect).The conference brochure explains:"We believe that America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and European identity must be defended. Today, our glorious Western civilization is under assault from many directions. Three such threats will be discussed at this conference. First, the massive influx to the United States and Europe of Third-World immigrants who do not share our fundamental political and cultural values. Second, the threat from Islam, a militant ideology that is hostile to our society and, in principle, committed to destroying it. Third, because of the persistent disappointing performance of blacks (which many whites mistakenly blame on themselves) many whites have guilt feelings that undermine Western morale and deter us from dealing sensibly with the other threats".

Among the stars of this highly civilised gathering will be Serge Trifkovic, a Serb American who has been a spokesman for the quiffed ethnic cleansing hero and representative of our "cultural values" Dr. Radovan Karadzic, now finally facing trial for war crimes at the Hague. Trifkovic has been welcomed to the hearth of American paleo and neo cons because he is author of a book called The Sword of the Prophet, which is supposed to give "the truth" on Muslims and Islam through the ages. An admirer calls him " a European historian of broad learning, sound philosophy and keen political insight".

Trifkovic is the foreign-affairs editor of Chronicles: A Magazine, online. In 2006, he had a cosy interview with Nick Griffin, in which he accepted Griffin’s denials of racism and did not ask about Griffin’s past, nor about BNP leaders who had expressed praise for Hitler. The article was entitled "Nick Griffin's Long March"

It seems Nick Griffin won't be taking his march to Baltimore this weekend, perhaps being too busy trying to see his party makes the most out of the protests at Britain's refineries and power stations by workers who are concerned by growing unemployment and understandably feel betrayed by New Labour, with its espousal of free market competition and restrictive labour laws. "When we say 'British Jobs for British workers' we mean it!", proclaims the BNP's website, quoting their own slogan which Gordon Brown foolishly borrowed when he became Labour leader, only to have it thrown back at him in workers' placards. But BNP members who turned uon pickets to leaflet have been turned away by trade unionists who don't want their poison. (Conversely, Socialist Party members participating in the protest actions said they had no problems).

The BNPers would have had to hide their disappointment on discovering that not only do strike leaders say their quarrel is with the bosses, not with the foreign workers, but the British workers taking part in the action include some whose skin colour would not meet the racialists' normal conception of "Britishness". Still, the BNP, like the corporate media (and those lefties ignorantly accusing the strikers of "racialism") will turn a blind eye to this small anomaly.

After all, as a British National Party it can support an American conference, and it is not averse to accepting American money, and it doesn't mind being represented among the racial supremacists by suitable non-Aryans. Whoever said fascists can't be flexible? Even Nazis can have a sense of humour..See: